• by Thom Forbes  @tforbes, January 4, 2011

Two stories about WikiLeaks and big corporations in the New York Times yesterday serve as yet another cautionary tale about communications strategy to anyone conducting business today. One examines the extraordinary lengths Bank of America is going to to defend itself in the event that Julian Assange's threat to "take down" a major U.S. bank with a hard-drive full of compromising information indeed is directed at it, as has been widely assumed.

Nelson D. Schwartz reports that BOA has a dedicated team of 15 to 20 people drawn from various departments, and led by its chief risk officer, examining documents for compromising information. It's also trying to figure out where the purported information might have come from, reportedly with no success.

The other story, on the front page, reveals that "diplomats are a big part of the sales force" for the two companies that compete for the lion's share of the worldwide airliner business, Boeing and Airbus. Eric Lipton, Nicola Clark and Andrew W. Lehren write that the "politicking and cajoling at the highest levels" includes "letters from presidents, state visits as bargaining chips and a number of leaders making big purchases based, at least in part, on how much the companies will dress up private planes."

Boeing hasn't responded yet, as far as I can tell, and perhaps that's because every $1 billion in commercial jet sales results in 11,000 jobs in the U.S. The court of public opinion is likely to weigh in its favor on this one. But that doesn't mean that it hasn't been engaging in a lot of strategery at the highest levels.

Put aside your personal feeling about whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a First Amendment hero redefining journalism or a shady dealer in private information that he has no right to divulge. Assange and WikiLeaks are irrelevant to the reality that you need to have a strategy in place to instantaneously react to embarrassing information about your company or products going viral whether you're a multinational conglomerate pushing genetically modified food or a fast-food franchise manned by some goofy kids. And it doesn't matter if the information is true, half-baked or an outright fabrication. If it's out there, you've got to be prepared to deal with it, even if the best response is no immediate response.

"At a time when terms such as 'classified,' 'top secret,' 'privileged,' and 'confidential' just don't carry the same weight that they used to, the public and private sectors alike must become more attuned to the reality that today's internal emails, memos, and even handwritten Post-It notes can create fodder for tomorrow's headlines," Richard S. Levick, Esq., president and CEO of Levick Strategic Communications, writes on the Bulletproof Blog. "Everything is discoverable. Nothing is out of the media's -- or bloggers' -- range."

When the information about BOA first emerged, Michele Clarke, svp, corporate practice at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, offered a deft game plan to any company that might find itself in a similar situation. "Should you become a target," she writes, "how you handle the first news cycle will make or break you."

Two key takeaways: triage the real risk and identify a single media outlet to carry your response if you've determined that being proactive is the best course of action. "It's key to work with a journalist with a fully developed view of the company," Clarke writes.

I think that's sage advice and that you ought to be thinking about whom your go-to reporter will be if bad news hits. No worthy journalist is going to hold back information or spin it favorably because of a prior relationship with you or your company. But when you're on deadline, context is as critical as having trust in your sources.

But being preemptive can seem to get a bit silly at times. Whoever at BOA, for example, came up with the idea of registering hundreds of potentially spiteful domain names such as BrianMoynihanBlows.com and BrianMoynihanSucks.com (Moynihan being the president and CEO) is paying too much attention to conventional punditry.